Tiny satellite took images of the Earth from a distance of 1 million kilometers

On may 5, when NASA launched its lander InSight Mars, along with him was sent two small absolutely identical satellite called the Mars Cube One. They are not bigger than a travel bag. Recently, one of them took a picture of the earth from a distance of 1 million kilometers. This was done in order to honor the image of the pale blue dot, created with the Voyager spacecraft in 1990.

The earth is a small dot that floats in an endless black void. Hard to think about it, being on its surface, but a new photo from NASA proves this fact.

Tiny modular spacecraft, known as they were launched (CubeStats), at the moment, who travel to Mars with InSight. They are called MarCO-MarCO A and-B. they are the most compact satellites ever sent beyond the moon.

May 9, passed the tests, and MarCO-B, which engineers also call Wall-E, made his first ever photo. It was done in order to verify the deployment of the antenna. However, in the distance you can see two objects – the Earth and its moon. This photo was taken at a distance of 1 million kilometers from our home planet.

“Consider it our homage to the “Voyager”” said Andy Bell, chief engineer MarCO. Ships CubeSats have never went that far into space, and today MarCO-MarCO A and-B work absolutely fine travelling. Their main task is to check the advantages of CubeSats in deep space. If at least one of the pair of satellites will reach Mars, we will be able to obtain more timely and complete information about the InSight you try to land on the planet’s surface.